It is recorded that 220 people were assassinated between the date of the death of Innocent VIII in 1492 and the accession of his successor Rodrigo Borgia, who took the name of Alexander VI. The clergy under Innocent were wicked beyond measure, as may be gathered from the edict issued against them, prohibiting them from keeping shambles, inns, gaming houses and low resorts of the worst kind. Innocent himself was responsible for a triple murder. The treatment last prescribed for him by his Jewish physician was the transfusion of the blood of three young boys of ten years of age into his unwholesome veins, a cruel operation which did not save him and killed the poor children. Alexander VI gained his election by bribery. Being possessed of immense wealth from the offices he held under his uncle Calixtus III he bought up nearly the whole college of cardinals and overcame all opposition in the conclave. He was weak, irresolute, and cowardly in character; and the condition of Rome, far from improving under his guidance, sank if possible into more complete degradation. There was no safety anywhere from assassination and debauchery, and the state was tormented by constant war. It was a reign of terror. The castle of St. Angelo was crammed with unhappy prisoners, arbitrarily seized, and its walls echoed constantly with their shrieks while undergoing torture, or when put to death by strangulation, poisoning, decapitation and quartering. “There is nothing so wicked or so criminal,” says a contemporary writer in 1502, “as not to be done publicly at Rome.” Alexander had no policy but that dictated by vacillation; he first sought the aid of the French King, Charles VIII, then formed a league against him; and when the king appeared in person, bent upon taking Rome, the pope tried conciliation again. Once more, however, he changed front, and treacherously seized the king’s envoys, whom he threw into the prison of the castle. Charles steadily continued to advance upon Rome and entered it in triumph at the head of a grand army, horse, foot and many guns. The pope fled for his life and took refuge in the castle of St. Angelo. King Charles summoned him to surrender and brought his artillery to bear upon the castle. At last the city rose in tumult, the pope yielded, conditions of peace were arranged and the French king kissed the pope’s hands at the Vatican, after which he withdrew with his army to Naples. Alexander VI was outdone in wickedness by his son Cæsar Borgia, the notorious duke of Valentino, handsome and capable, of determined character and many resources, but withal cruel, treacherous, vicious, hypocritical and totally unprincipled. Between father and son there was little safety in Rome. Unjustifiable arrest was followed by secret poison or the rope. Cardinals and great nobles were done to death, and in the midst of this St. Angelo was almost destroyed as though by the act of God. One day a